[BTS] G-Major 175 - Persia, Warlord, Space Colony - Deadline January 26th 2021

[Noble Zarkon]

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While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we like to run time-definite competitions between updates that we call Gauntlets. Standard Hall of Fame rules still apply, but any games meeting the settings will be counted towards the Gauntlet.

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Space Colony (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Warlord
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Tiny
• Speed: Any
• Map Type: Rain Forest
• Civ: Persia
• Opponents: Must include Mongolia (Kublai Khan), Russia (Catherine)
• Version: 3.19.005
• Date: 30th December 2020 to 26th January 2021

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

 

[iggymnrr]

Interesting. Graph paper can be useful as it is on duel maps. Mining Inc. resources look to be about the same as duel -- 8ish. That's 16 instead of 32 hammers. Best bet to increase that would be seeing lots of gold at the start so maybe 24 hammers is possible. Feels state property-ish. OTOH with the right settings the Great Lighthouse can be built. (Seriously. I swear.)

 

[Conquistador 63]

Worth noticing that in these gauntlets/challenge games with speed=“any” the HoF system currently does not seem to recognize the earliest finish date and sorts by lowest turn number, favoring quick speed games.

 

[ZPV]

I might give this a whirl - depending on how frustrated I get with the mapscript and all the jungles and lack of forests.
I haven't really studied space games on too-small-to-be-comfortable maps.
Naturally it feels like you can get around 15 good cities (i.e. plenty of food + rivers), which doesn't seem like enough, so maybe the strategy is ICS around the sides of that, so you don't get too close to the dom limit?

Changing the sea level (by pre-setting it on another map) does affect the final map. So Low will give you roughly 1% water tiles, Medium 5-6% and High 11-12%.
I like Low for the extra land and single giant river system that spans the entire world.
The climate setting doesn't appear to do anything.
Max opponents will definitely generate more mining resources - the map generator balances them to the number of players.

On marathon at least, it definitely feels like a settler walk is necessary (although one settler will return home to found a city in the clear patch) - those huts need to be settlers and workers, not Mysticism, Fishing and Masonry! (Techs will only pop once you have a city.)
On faster gamespeeds I'd definitely go for state property (it's my default position because it's easier to play and puts less pressure on the industrial age), but for marathon I'm not sure that's right.

 

[Anysense]

I think higher sea level improves your chances to have some clam on the map, although with so few players it will be still very unlikely. Make sure you have wheat, though, its such a pain to play space without wheat and sea food.

 

[iggymnrr]

Immortals look fine for dealing with the AI. I checked my Mehmed game on a settler duel rainforest. Somehow I managed the space elevator with no forests and was about 4 turns off the record. There is a random event that grants a free engineer after building x number of forges. That elevator must have been done with a late GE + the one from fusion. It's been awhile since I've used state property. With Mining Inc. and Standard Ethanol the ending can go very, very fast. Ethanol can be extremely good here. But Mining Inc. sucks so badly that I'm wondering if Darius can state property factories and coal plants and then zip Mining and Ethanol simultaneously. This isn't a great map for an Environmentalism + Cereal Mills approach.

 

[ZPV]

I played a sighter out to 915AD (where I didn't really micro or do the important planning stuff).
32 cities, 419 pop. Mining (15 resources/30 hammers) + Cereal. ~6-7k bpt in the endgame.
No gold on the map, so happiness was an issue, and staying under the domination limit meant some border cities didn't get libraries etc.
Production and Science felt decently well balanced during the spaceship building phase.

If I play another game, I'd make the following changes:

• Stonehenge seems well worth it rather than lots of cities having to pop their own borders.
• Only the 5 big space part cities really need Cereal Mills - the rest could feasibly go to Std Ethanol instead. That might make the research dropoff from building parts in 14 cities feel a bit less.
• Can I get away with fewer cities? Expansion takes a long time without IMP or EXP. I built all 32 before Hanging Gardens in 750BC but it was quite a long time before they were all productive. Maybe Cyrus is a genuine option.
• Banking/Mercantilism is a key tech and needs to be prioritised more (i.e. before Education I think)
• Chop more, earlier, and make up the difference on the space parts with Kremlin whip overflow hijinks. Cristo Redentor is cheaper than a 4-man golden age.
• Early game production really does feel like a major bottleneck.

 

[iggymnrr]

Can I get away with fewer cities?

Dynamic did 570 AD game with 20ish cities on a chieftain rainforest.

That's pretty good for Mining Inc.

 

[iggymnrr]

I looked over some of my fastest games. With Darius there doesn't seem to be any immediate warrior rushes and almost laconic immortal rushing. (Generally all AIs get conquered by 2000ish BC tho.) With almost all leaders the Hagia Sophia is up before 2000BC. This also helps reduce settler building stress. Invariably the mysticism->polytheism path to civil service is taken skipping alphabet and currency. (Polytheism doesn't pop from a hut.) Sometimes even the 4th (of many) settlers isn't settled before turn 60. A game plan is beginning to form.

 

[iggymnrr]

Deadline seems to be coming up fast. I decided to set my hair on fire and run straight at the AI. 1990 BC. 11 cities. 12 immortals built, lost 4, and all AI capitols taken. Last one had the only stone. No wheat on map unless paratroopers will be needed to get it. Can't see that area for a long time. 3 settlers built. 1 warrior rush at turn 22 in the nick of time. Huts got 2 settlers, a worker and some cash. Not planning on using slavery. Coming close to CoL (scientists/artists) and Oracle.

Dynamic used to play these rainforests with ungodly godly silvery mega-capitols. I couldn't take time to find one. Don't know if I can blitz the rest out. Will try.

 

[iggymnrr]

Finished a 900 AD game. Map had no wheat or deer. Random event granted +2 health but also -1 pop in a lot of cities. Ouch. Golden age from sports league fired. A few turns got lost switching civics after a golden age finished. Oops. But I finished the game in time after an all-nighter. Yeah!

 

[iggymnrr]

Oh my. My game was accepted in first place. And 5 turns were lost due to not paying attention for civic switches! I was not expecting that.

It is an interest map size and level. While my play was frenetic due to time constraints there was a lot I never worried about. Like production. No slavery in the game at all. Not much chopping either. I just guessed and tossed out 24 cities and hoped not to breach the domination limit. For good measure the last AI was relocated to culture press me. Had the last border pop gone through it looked like I would have 1 tile to spare. But the bird was in the air so a city was gifted back. Turns out the AI would have snatched 1 tile so there was a minimum of 2 tiles to spare.

One item was significantly lucky. The warrior rush at turn 22 when the AI would finish a warrior at turn 23. The cursor radar indicated 3 AI cities all exactly the same distance away and in the nick of time. Which city to rush? Gems, pigs or rice? And the one chosen ... rice. Turns out it also had horse and gold. It didn't take long for 4 cities to spit out 12 immortals. (Mining or AH were not my early tech choices. Something to do with religion and aiming for theology ... Chalk that up to being consistent with the game plan.)

Border pops. No Stonehenge. Religion was used for future pacifism cities otherwise caste artists got used. 2 monuments got built in case the Sports League event fired. (They are needed for that Zeus thingy.) I tried really hard to keep most cites from exceeding 300 culture. Missionaries were active late for the final building phase though.

Mercantilism, libbed state property, and environmentalism with Mining Inc and Standard Ethanol. Health was so severe cities threatened to shrink into nothing.

First wonder built was the Hagia Sophia if I remember correctly. I had only had 61 workers for 24 cities. Not 4:1. Almost all of the 24 cities had been settled before building the wonder. It doesn't take long for 11 early cities to double. (12 immortals had garnered 5 cities and 5 or 6 workers. 3ish settlers had also been built during this phase. 1 warrior had grabbed a city and 2 settlers came from huts.)

And last but not least. Darius.

 

[ZPV]

Nice one!

I don't really have the time to improve my game at the moment.
Your early expansion was much better than mine - I checked my 1900BC save - the closest I have to your benchmark - and only had 7 cities.

 

[iggymnrr]

Thx.

I'm never optimistic about alphabet at this speed. Kublai begged agriculture from me while I was building the ship. How is that even possible?

Things that didn't have much utility to me early were mining, BW and writing. One of these can't be traded for as it is a prerequisite. Everything was connected by river so the discovery of horse prompted sailing. What exactly is alphabet worth? The discount to currency is nice but it looks like it comes too late. Maybe if AH and writing pops from huts ... That devalues it too but then I am in effect trading with myself.